“Dear me, yes,” answered Brinkley, determined to give the reins to his imagination. “I’ve seen any number of them. Huge ships broken up like match-boxes, and every soul on board them drowned; then afterwards——”
“Ah yes, master,” said William Jones eagerly as the other paused; “arter——”
“Well, afterwards, my friend, I’ve seen treasures come ashore that would have made you and me, and a dozen others such, men for life.”
“Dear, dear! and what became of it, master—tell me that?”
“What became of it?” repeated Brinkley, whose imagination was beginning to give way; “why, it was appropriated, of course, by the population.”
“And didn’t you take your share, master?”
“I?” repeated Brinkley, who was getting muddled; “well, firstly, because I didn’t wish to—I have a superstitious horror of wearing dead men’s things; and secondly, because I could not have done so had I wished. The people are clannish; they wanted it all for themselves, and would have killed any interfering stranger.”
“I suppose, master, there be no coastguard chaps there?” said William Jones.
“Oh dear, no! No coastguards.”
“Ah!” sighed the old man, coming out of his trance. “It warn’t so long ago when there warn’t no coastguard chaps here neither. Then times was better for honest men. On a dark night ’twas easy to put a light on the headland, and sometimes we got a prize or two that way, didn’t we, William dear; but now——”